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"Wake up, women!" is how the name of the Indian organization Jagori translates. It has shaped the women's rights movement in India for nearly 30 years. Based in India's capital New Delhi, the organization's 19 female staff use sophisticated PR techniques to give women in India a voice and make lasting improvements to women's position in Indian society. The action they take includes campaigns, publications, the protection of women's rights and gender equality, training courses, workshops and advice for women and girls who are victims of sexual harassment and violence. Jagori aims to reach out to women throughout the country and mobilize them to stand up for their rights.

Dr. Asma Jahangir is a well-known Pakistani lawyer and human rights activist. For over 30 years, she has campaigned for human rights in Pakistan as a tireless critic of the military regime and religious extremists. She is among the most important voices for women's rights in her society.

The Afghan Women's Network (AWN) is the largest women's network in Afghanistan. With over 110 member organizations and 5,000 women, the Network fights for the rights of women and children in Afghanistan. Human rights champion Afifa Azim and several other exiled activists in Pakistan founded the Network in 1995 following the UN's Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. The Network's vision is an Afghanistan in which women, children and men enjoy equal rights and women's contributions to society are respected and honored.

On Valentine's Day in 2000, 17-year-old Lilia Alejandra García Andrade was abducted while on her way home from work in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. She was later found after having been brutally raped, tortured and killed. The murderer was supposedly never found. Sadly, Lilia's fate has been shared by hundreds of girls and young women to date in and around Ciudad Juárez, a major city in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua.

As one of Turkey's leading feminists, Pinar Ilkkaracan has been shaping the women's movement for more than 20 years now. Her organization, "Women for Women's Human Rights – New Ways" (WWHR), played a major role in reforming the Turkish penal code in 2004. She lobbies for gender equality and sexual liberty both inside and outside her homeland.

The Iranian human rights activist Shadi Sadr knows all about jail conditions in her country. The 38-year-old lawyer has herself been detained many times in Evin, a jail for political prisoners. Blindfolded, Sadr was repeatedly forced to answer questions from her male jailers about her involvement in the country's women's movement, and about her travel, campaigns and contacts, particularly those abroad. She was released on bail, but her organization, RAAHI, which campaigns for women's rights, was outlawed.

She was a refugee, a Hazara woman and therefore part of the most persecuted minority in Afghanistan. Her husband went missing and never returned. In a country ravaged by more than three decades of war, Taliban rule and violation of women's rights, Sima Samar became a doctor, Afghanistan's first Minister of Women's Affairs and one of the country's most prominent human rights advocates.

58-year-old Dr. Denis Mukwege is a gynecological surgeon in Bukavu, a city in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). He treats women who have been gang-raped or suffered other forms of sexual violence.

"I want a society free of human trafficking," says Anuradha Koirala, the founder of Maiti Nepal. This is a shelter and home for Nepali girls and women who are victims of domestic violence, trafficking and sexual exploitation.

It has been 65 years since India — the largest democracy in the world — attained independence.
Yet, justice for all is still a far cry in the country where the caste system continues to determine political, social, and economic lives of a billion people. Money and muscle power, together with political string-pulling, often result in denial of justice for the hapless ‘have-nots’, especially the Dalits (untouchables), ravaged by poverty and illiteracy.

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„Asylum is a human right. Solidarity, empathy and humanity belong to a multicultural and open-hearted Europe“, this message is spread by Amnesty International and many other organisations – the Roland Berger Foundation supports the campaign as well. Until now more than 12.700 people have signed the campaign. They all want to show their solidarity with the refugees who are seeking protection in Europe right now: „It is time to stand up for human rights in Europe.“ http://www.europa-der-menschenrechte.org/

Amnesty for Mazen Darwish

The Recipient of the Roland Berger Human Dignity Award 2011 and founder of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), Mazen Darwish, is covered by a political amnesty. This decision was made by an anti-terrorism court in Damascus on Monday, 31 August. Darwish had been granted a provisional release on 10 August. The Syrian journalist spent over three years in arbitrary detention after being arrested alongside a number of other colleagues during a raid on the office of the SCM by Air Force Intelligence personnel in Damascus in February 2012. Mazen and his colleagues were facing up to 15 years in prison under article 8 of the 2012 anti-terrorism law on a charge of “publishing information about terrorists acts.”

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) released its 2015 Hunger Report: “About 795 million people are undernourished globally, down 167 million over the last decade, and 216 million less than in 1990–92.” http://www.fao.org/hunger/en/

“Let’s help refugees thrive, not just survive.” A very interesting talk by UNHCR spokesperson Melissa Fleming: http://bit.ly/1rTOT5M